


just twin fire signs, four blue eyes

by lazyfish



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Multi, Post-Episode: s02e22 SOS Part 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:15:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22382425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyfish/pseuds/lazyfish
Summary: Jemma gets taken away to an alien planet, Bobbi gets shot, and Fitz gets a hard lesson in what it means to love.
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Bobbi Morse, Leo Fitz/Lance Hunter/Bobbi Morse/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 12
Kudos: 24
Collections: Marvel Polyship Bingo 2020





	just twin fire signs, four blue eyes

“Jemma’s gone.”

“What?” Bobbi’s voice creaks in her chest and Fitz wishes he had better news. Bobbi still looks fragile, her skin as paper-white as the sheets of her hospital bed, but she _has_ to know. She has to understand why Jemma isn’t there beside her now. She has to.

“Jemma - the rock -” Fitz flaps his hands as he searches for words.

Hunter places a careful touch on his arm and Fitz stops. Just stops. “The monolith opened. Jemma’s gone.”

Bobbi stares into space. Doesn’t respond.

Fitz leaves two minutes later. He can’t make things better, but he feels by staying he’ll just make everything worse.

\---

“I thought you weren’t coming back.” 

Fitz has the good grace to look ashamed. It’s been two weeks and he _should’ve_ come earlier. His girlfriend is in the hospital and he should’ve come earlier, because she needs him and he loves her - but his other girlfriend is also missing, and Fitz isn’t sure how to handle it all without crumbling. Hunter seems to be doing okay, but he’s also spectacularly good at hiding his feelings when he wants to.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Bobbi says flatly. 

“But it’s not.” Fitz trudges over to the chair at the head of Bobbi’s bed, sinking into it with a hollow sigh. “I love you, you know that?”

Bobbi doesn’t answer.

“You know that?” Fitz repeats, reaching for her. She doesn’t reach back, and he stops midway through the motion, limp.

“Will you always love Jemma more than me?” she asks. There are tears in her eyes, Fitz realizes belatedly.

He’s making Bobbi cry, and he doesn’t know how to answer her question.

“Jesus Christ,” she mutters, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes as if to hold the tears in. “Jesus fucking Christ, Hunter said I was crazy, but I’m not, am I? You love her more and -”

“I don’t,” he finally manages to eke out. “I don’t,” he repeats, stronger.

“I needed you,” Bobbi says, dropping her hands to her lap. “I am in so much pain all the fucking time and somehow you managed to make it hurt worse because _I needed you_ and you weren’t there.”

“I’m sorry.” He grabs for her again, and isn’t deterred this time when she doesn’t seek him out, too. Her hand is cold and clammy, oddly limp in his. “I love you,” he says again.

“Then start acting like it.”

\---

“Shh, shh, shh…” Fitz wants to be able to do more, but when Bobbi has nightmares, most of his choices involve waiting for her to wake up. 

“I couldn’t save her,” Bobbi says when she jerks awake. He cards his fingers through her greasy hair, holding her as close as he dares.

“You tried your best,” Fitz whispers, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “You did everything you could. You can rest.”

Bobbi sags against him, pressing her face into the space between his collarbones. “I should’ve -”

“You couldn’t save Kara, _mùirn_.” The Gaelic slips out unthinkingly, and Fitz tenses. He hasn’t spoken it in so long, not since his father left. It’s such a distant memory, but it feels so right, here and now. Something that is his and hers, untouched by… by Jemma.

“I should’ve.”

“You couldn’t.” _You couldn’t even save yourself_ , Fitz wants to say, but that won’t help anyone, least of all him. He has already lost one he loves, and he can see Hunter slipping away too, so set on revenge he might lose himself along the way.

“I should’ve.”

He rocks her back to sleep, but stays awake long past when her breathing has mostly evened out. She breathes differently now.

“I love you,” he says into the dark. It’s been far too long since he’s heard her say it back.

\---

“Fitz, _please_.”

“No.”

“But the doctor said -”

“I don’t _care_ what the doctor said! What if it hurts you?”

“You’re impossible.”

“I just want you to be okay.”

“And I just want to get laid!” Bobbi throws her hands up into the air, exasperated. “Just say so if you don’t want to fuck me, Fitz. But stop talking shit about me being hurt. I’ve _been_ hurt.”

“I don’t lie to you, Bobbi.”

“Then _please_ just let me have this one thing.” She bites her lip, and suddenly the whole facade she’s put up crumbles. She’s scared. Bobbi doesn’t want sex - she wants intimacy. With him.

“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he warns as he carefully pushes her back onto the bed.

“Don’t stop,” Bobbi whispers, even as he settles himself between her legs. “Please, don’t stop.”

And he doesn’t, not until she’s breathed his name into the stale afternoon air, his body and hers one, if only just for now.

\---

“You’re staring.” Bobbi stops with her PT exercises so she can put her hands on her hips.

“You’re just nice to look at.”

“Come on, Fitz.”

“Will you run away with me?” he asks. “When we have Jemma back… will you run away? From here, I mean?”

Lines appear on Bobbi’s face where there weren’t any before. “I don’t understand what you’re asking me.”

“Jemma and I used to talk about a cottage in Perthshire, for the two of us. But I think we could find someplace sunny for you, _mùirn_. Where the cold won’t hurt your knee.”

“Ask me when you find Jemma,” Bobbi says after a long pause.

She doesn’t believe it’ll happen, but Fitz knows it will. And when he has all three of his lovers back in his arms he’ll whisk them away to someplace no one can touch them.

He can’t let them be hurt anymore.

\---

He memorizes Bobbi. He thought before he knew her, but he’d been wrong. There is so much of her he’d forgotten to explore, and he wants to know it all.

He maps out her mouth first, then her face, her neck, her chest, the space between her thighs… Every part of her is more interesting than the last and Fitz begins to think that maybe, if he doesn’t find Jemma, he could still be happy.

He learns, too, the scar across her back, and the one across her knee.

“I’m a monster,” she whispers one day while he traces idle circles over the worst of her scars.

“You couldn’t have saved her,” Fitz murmurs back. 

“I can’t feel it when you touch me there,” Bobbi says, switching the subject. He knows there’s no nerve endings in scar tissue - Jemma’s told him before, and so has Bobbi - but it doesn’t stop him from wanting to touch her anyways.

“That doesn’t make you a monster.”

“Tell me that when someone else has stitched you back together.”

“What do you think you’ve been doing?” Fitz says, rolling over so he can look Bobbi in the eye. Jemma disappearing tore his heart in two. Bobbi’s questions in the hospital two weeks after had ripped him up further. Every time she lets him back in again, his heart stitches itself back together.

“Monster,” she repeats, though she sounds more unsure this time.

“I love you,” he says back.

She kisses him this time, mouth against mouth. She doesn’t stop until she’s gasping for breath, her fingers tangled in his hair.

“You’re alive,” Fitz promises her.

“They tell monsters that, too.” But she kisses him again, so maybe, just maybe, she believes him.

\---

“Don’t go.”

“I have to.”

“You two always say that,” she pouts.

“Maybe it’s always true.”

“It’s cold without you,” she tries again.

“I’ll make sure you have an extra blanket.”

“Fitz…”

“ _Mùirn_ , I’m coming back.” He presses a kiss into her palm, then places her hand over her heart. “I promise.”

“I’m not asking for promises.” She whirls away from him before he can respond - but she is also there, waiting, when he comes home.

\---

Jemma is back.

Fitz holds her tight against his chest and waits for Hunter and Bobbi to kneel beside him - but when he looks up, Bobbi is staring back at him with a thousand ghosts in her eyes.

When Jemma reaches out, Bobbi steps into her arms. When Jemma asks for a kiss, Bobbi gives it. But there is something _wrong_ , and Fitz can only see it because he knows Bobbi inside and out.

He corners her when they get back to the base and Hunter is helping Jemma shower.

She speaks before he can even get a question out.

“Do you still love me?” He can tell how much she hates having to ask the question, but at least the answer is an easy one.

“I do. I love you, and I have loved you, and I will love you.”

“I…” she looks away.

“What’s wrong?”

“You saved her.”

Oh.

_Oh._

“It wasn’t your job to protect Jemma.”

“Wasn’t it?”

“Bobbi.” He reaches up, cups her face in his hands. “ _Mùirn_ , you need to save yourself before you can save anyone else. And if you keep believing you’re a monster, you’ll never save anyone again.”

“I saved you?”

“Because I don’t believe the lies you tell yourself.” He pulls her down for a kiss. “You’re not responsible for the world. And I love you.”

She rests her forehead against his, and for a moment, there’s just space. Space and blue eyes and all the ways they’ve both failed.

“I love you, too.”


End file.
